BAGHDAD, 4 August 2005 — Fourteen Marines were killed yesterday in one of the deadliest attacks on US forces since the invasion of Iraq, and an American freelance reporter was gunned down in the relatively calm south.

The Marines, along with an interpreter, were killed when their armored vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb during combat operations near Haditha, 260 kilometers (160 miles) northwest of Baghdad, the US military said. One other Marine was wounded.

The latest deaths bring the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 1,811, according to AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.

Since Monday a total of 21 Marines have been killed in western Iraq’s restive Al-Anbar province, scene of many of the deadliest attacks in the insurgency that followed the toppling of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. A total of 37 US troops have been killed over the past eight days. Ansar Al-Sunnah, an extremist group linked with the Al-Qaeda network, said in an Internet statement it had killed eight US Marines and captured a ninth in western Iraq. The US military denied capture of any of its Marines.

It said it killed some Marines Monday by “slitting their throats,” while others were shot and vowed to publish more details on the killings and pictures of the “American prisoner” later. The statement could not be verified. Yesterday’s attack on Marines is the deadliest on US forces since a Dec. 21 lunchtime blast at a US base in the northern town of Mosul that killed 22, including eighteen Americans, 14 of them US soldiers and four civilians.

In Washington, Brig. Gen. Carter Ham of the US Joint Staff said rebels were using armor penetrating explosives in recent attacks. “We are seeing different techniques that are being used in an effort to counter the efforts of coalition and Iraqi security forces to protect folks while they are moving — different types of penetrators, different techniques of triggering the events,” Ham said.

Meanwhile, US journalist Steven Vincent, 50, was shot dead after being snatched Tuesday evening from a street in central Basra along with his female Iraqi translator who was shot twice but survived.

“There were four gunmen in a white pick-up truck and they kidnapped the two,” police Lt. Col. Karim Al-Zaidi said. Vincent, apparently the first US journalist to be kidnapped and killed, was wearing a black T-shirt that had a photograph of revered Shiite saint Hussein Ali and a symbolic necklace usually worn by Shiite Muslims, sources said.

Southern Iraq, where the British military is based, has remained relatively calm since the US-led war, largely avoiding the daily diet of deadly violence in many other parts of the country. “Vincent’s body was recovered by local Basra authorities and the US forces along with the British forces will determine who is responsible for the death,” US Embassy acting spokesman Peter J. Mitchell said.

Vincent wrote for the Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times and the conservative National Review magazine. He had also written a book on Iraq titled “In The Red Zone.” In his final report for the New York Times dated July 31, Vincent wrote that 75 percent of police in Basra were supporters of Shiite leader Moqdada Al-Sadr. “And unfortunately, the British seem unable or unwilling to do anything about it,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s panel drafting the new constitution agreed to citizens holding dual nationality. “Double nationality was accepted in principle in the constitution,” Munther Al-Fadhil, a Kurdish panelist, said. The panel agreed that dual nationality would be applicable to Iraqis who lost their citizenship after 1958, the year Iraqi Army officers staged a coup and overthrew the British monarchy.

The clause virtually bars Iraqi-born Jews living in exile from recovering their Iraqi nationality, because most migrated to Israel after its creation in 1948 after they were charged with being agents of the new Jewish state. Today only some two dozen Jews are still in Iraq. Some thorny issues — such as the role of Islam, whether Kurdish should be an official language alongside Arabic, and how to bring federalism into Iraq — still remain unresolved even as parliamentarians have vowed that the draft would be ready by Aug. 15 ahead of the mid-October referendum.